When a system malfunctioned on Deep Space Nine, O'Brien was frequently called on to open a panel and to repair the gizmos therein. This usually looked cool and was often a source of dramatic tension. The problem, from a production point-of-view, was that in many cases, directors didn't decide which panel they wanted to be opened until the last minute. That meant that there was very little time to design the gizmos to fit into those openings. These circuit panel racks were designed to deal with this problem. They would fit into nearly any opening because they were designed to fit into the corners of an enclosure. This let the art department install these gizmos just about anywhere that a director decided that O'Brien needed to fix something.